Ivan Kal - Olympus

“What about our trade with Olympus? Earth is dependent on it.” President Von Holt asked.

The rest of the room grew quiet and turned to look at him.

“I made a mistake all those years ago.” Tomas said regretfully. “I made you too dependent on Olympus, but the fault was not all mine, it was you who allowed it. It will be hard, but you will recover, if you work together. Our facilities on Earth are now yours to do with as you see fit. But we will not be leaving you our technology, we will dismantle or destroy anything that we can’t take with us.”

The League President stood up.

“You would throw the world into chaos and run away!?”

“I’m not running away. We are just tired of looking after you. Sometimes children need tough love. We showed you the way, it is up to you now to grow up.” With that he turned and left, the room immediately exploded into arguments, Von Holt heard that the topic of most of the arguments was the distribution of the Olympus facilities, and territory. They didn’t care that Olympus was leaving. My god, he is right. We are children. President Von Holt thought, he looked around seeing his staff members joining the yelling matches. He turned from them disgusted, he walked out of the conference room. There was no one around, no security officers that were there before. He walked down the corridors, and then took the elevator up to the surface. As he stepped into the bright light of the day, he saw that Olympus transport ships were gone, and then up in the distance he saw small black dots that were gone the next moment.

Two months later

Seo-yun sat in her office on the station orbiting Jupiter, she looked at the screen mounted on the wall, it showed the image from outside the station. Most of the screen was taken up by Jupiter, but there in the distance she could see four massive ships, they were still under construction, but it will take them only one more month to finish them. Most of Olympus fabricators were now working full time on their construction, the others were working on fabricating things that they will need for the long trip, mainly stasis chambers. It will take them just over a month to reach the number of stasis units for everyone. The last count put Olympus population at 7 and a half million. And every one of them had chosen to come with them. Five months ago, just after the incident, Tomas addressed all of Olympus citizens, some watched him live via FTL comm devices. Other watched as the signal got to them. He revealed everything. He told them about the alien ship they found, he told them about his childhood dream, he told them all of his plans, and Olympus listened in awe of this one man. A man who changed their lives, who made them better, who wanted to do that for all of mankind, but couldn’t fight against the corruption of the world. The feed went on for hours, he told them all of his fears, and all of his hopes, and he told them about all the advances, all the technology that they have, or were working on. He told them about the strides in genetics that will allow humans to live forever. He told them about his struggles, how he didn’t know if he should give that technology to the Earth, how he feared that it would destroy them, because they were not mature enough to wield it. And then he told them how he didn’t want to see any one of them die for the greed of others. He told them his plan, he told them that he wanted to leave this Solar system, Earth behind, and start over somewhere else. He asked them to come with him. And then he waited. The people talked with their families, their friends and their acquaintances. They sent him their response, every single one of them chose to leave with him, with the person who gave them so much.

Olympus was always run by Tomas, but even when they became independent, they still operated as a company. No more, the people have spoken, they made Tomas their ruler, their King, their President and their Emperor. They put their trust in him, knowing that it will be safe with him.

Olympus population moved to Mars, waiting there for the ships to be finished. The other ships that Olympus had were now retrofitted as transports that will take the population to the colony ships in a few trips. None of those ships will go with them, some will be scraped for materials, others destroyed, only the 8 warships that they had, will be fitted with stasis units and a hyperdrive, and come with them. The stations and shipyards they had in the system were already mostly dismantled or striped of all technology, their mining operations likewise.

Tomas had given the order for the genetic treatment to be administered to anyone who wished it, which was everyone, who didn’t want to live forever? Seo-yun herself already had the treatment, somehow it didn’t seem real yet, she looked the same, intellectually she knew that she would never change, and that she already had unlimited lifespan. But she didn’t feel it.

Seo-yun turned her gaze from the four ships to the report on her desk. It was a regular update on the stasis units, and their construction progress. In a month Tomas would arrive to Jupiter, and then people would start arriving and be put into stasis, next time they woke up, they would be on an alien world, far away from Earth. She brought up the image of their future home. They found it in the alien charts. The aliens visited it. They classified it as an Earth like planet, with a gravity just a bit over Earth’s at 1.1G’s, orbiting one of the suns of the system, which was the same as our own Sol. The system itself was completely inside a Nebula, there were two stars, the second one was a red dwarf, and six planets, two of which could be inhabited by humans, though one was a lot colder than the other. They chose the one that was warmer as their destination, the files said that there was life on the planet, though no life with higher intelligence, the world had a bit more land than Earth did but nothing drastic, so the climate should be very close to that of the Earth. The system also had one gas giant, about the size of Jupiter, and three more planets that were basically just rocks. There were also a lot of moons orbiting the gas giant, some of which had atmosphere, though the records didn’t have any more information. The Nebula was 600 light years away, with their current hyperdrives moving at ten times the speed of light, it will take them around 60 years to get there. Most of them will spend the time in stasis, while others would be woken periodically to check on the stasis units and make sure that everything was alright.

Tomas didn’t want to leave anything behind, but Seo-yun still had hope for the people on Earth. So she went behind Tomas’s back, she left a ship in the asteroid belt, the hyper capable scout ship that they sent to Alpha Centauri, she equipped it with an FTL comm, she also put an Ai she trusted inside the ships computer, and gave him instructions to release the information and control of the ship only if he thought that those who found him deserved it, she also gave him the coordinates of the Nebula they will be leaving for, and then she powered it down, perhaps by the time the ship was found they would have learned to work together.

November 2103 – three months later

Adrian sat in the command chair of the Athena, Bethany was sitting beside him, and the rest of the command center was filled with the same people from seven months ago. The holo-desk showed the Athena leading the formation of seven other Olympus warships, in the middle of the formation were four enormous ships, 700 meters long, 50 tall and 350 wide, they were box shaped, slow and maneuvered poorly. They were made in haste and with only one purpose in mind, to get them to another world. They didn’t have any wasted space, the stasis pods took over most of the ships room, with a small bridge, hyperdrives and sub-light engines taking over the rest. Each ship carried a little under 2 million people, with all the resources they would need to start on another world, their fabricators, food processing plants, and other things. Most of the population was already in stasis, even though they haven’t yet left the Solar system, and were just now approaching Saturn. There were still people who were awake on the colony ships making sure that everything was in order, making some final adjustments. They like those on the warships would go to sleep when they entered hyperspace. After that few of them would be periodically awakened, just like Adrian and his crew, though those on warships would wake more often. They, alongside a few from the colony ships would be awoken prior to their arrival in the Nebula. The system wasn’t yet named, and would be only after they arrive. For now Adrian had to look forward to another four months of travel through the Solar system. It will be a long time before he and anyone else sets foot on a planet again.